Women’s group calls for sex strike against Masuzoe supporters

Newly elected Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe’s swept in on a landslide, but he’s already raising some hackles over his claim that menstruation makes women unfit for government.

A group of Japanese women have called for a “sex strike” against men who vote for Masuzoe over his comments in 1989 interview with a men’s magazine in which he said women are irrational because of their menstrual cycle.

“Women are not normal when they are having a period … You can’t possibly let them make critical decisions about the country (during their period) such as whether or not to go to war,” he said.

The Tokyo-based campaign group garnered almost 3,000 followers on Twitter since it launched last week and bills itself as “the association of women who will not have sex with men who vote for Masuzoe.”

“We won’t have sex with men who will vote for Mr Masuzoe,” the group’s profile read. They have branded Masuzoe, a former health minister, as “the enemy of women.”

However, it is unclear which way this sex strike can be aimed, and how the women will be able to discover all the male voters who chose Masuzoe as governor.

Masuzoe won a decisive victory in the closely-watched “nuclear” polls. A pro-nuclear candidate, Masuzoe veered away from the nuclear debate overshadowing the elections and focused on making Tokyo “the number one city of the world” ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose ruling Liberal Democratic Party endorsed Masuzoe, welcomed his election in what some see as a boost to Abe’s pro-nuclear energy policy.